Viktor Nikolaevich Zemskov (russian: Ви́ктор Никола́евич Земско́в, 30 January 1946 – 22 June 2015) was a

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

and Russian historian, doctor (habil.) of historical sciences (2005), research associate of the Institute of Russian History of the

Russian Academy of Sciences The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; russian: Росси́йская акаде́мия нау́к (РАН) ''Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk'') consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across t ...

.Viktor Zemskov
on the website of the Institute of Russian History He was a specialist on the

Gulag The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the State Political Directorate, GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= ...

. Zemskov revealed in detail the secret-police statistics about the Gulag, resolving many disputes among Western historians about the number of people affected by

political repression in the Soviet Union Throughout the history of the Soviet Union, tens of millions of people suffered political repression, which was an instrument of the state since the October Revolution. It culminated during the Stalin era, then declined, but it continued to exist ...

Education and career

In 1981, Zemskov defended his candidate's (PhD) thesis "Contribution by working class to strengthening the material-technical base of agriculture in the USSR in the 1960s". In 1989, he joined the commission of the History Department of the

USSR Academy of Sciences The Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union was the highest scientific institution of the Soviet Union from 1925 to 1991, uniting the country's leading scientists, subordinated directly to the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (until 1946 ...

led by its corresponding member Yuri Polyakov to determine population losses and received access to statistical reports made by the

OGPU The Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU; russian: Объединённое государственное политическое управление) was the intelligence and state security service and secret police of the Soviet Union f ...

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. ...

- MGB- MVD and kept in the Central State Archive of the October Revolution (CSAOR) renamed the

State Archive of the Russian Federation The State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) (russian: Государственный архив Российской Федерации (ГАРФ)) is a large Russian state archive managed by Rosarkhiv (the Federal Archival Agency of R ...

. According to Leonid Lopatnikov, Zemskov was the only historian admitted to the archives for the reports, and later the archives were again "closed." Between 1990 and 1992, he published the first precise statistical data on the Gulag which were based on the Gulag archives. His papers were criticized by Sergei Maksudov. In Maksudov's opinion,

Lev Razgon Lev Emmanuilovich Razgon (russian: Лев Эммануи́лович Разго́н; 1 April 1908 – 8 September 1999) was a Soviet journalist, a prisoner of the Gulag from 1938 to 1942 and again from 1950 to 1955, a Russian writer and, latterl ...

and his followers including

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Russian novelist. One of the most famous Soviet dissidents, Solzhenitsyn was an outspoken critic of communism and helped to raise global awareness of political repr ...

did not envisage the total number of the camps very well and markedly exaggerated their size. At the same time, from their experience, they knew something extraordinarily important about the Archipelago, its diabolical anti-human nature. On the other hand, Zemskov, who published many documents by the NKVD and KGB, is very far from understanding of the Gulag essence and the nature of socio-political processes in the country. Without distinguishing the degree of accuracy and reliability of certain figures, without making a critical analysis of sources, without comparing new data with already known information, Zemskov absolutizes the published materials by presenting them as the ultimate truth. As a result, his attempts to make generalized statements with reference to a particular document, as a rule, do not hold water. In response, Zemskov wrote that the charge that Zemskov allegedly did not compare new data with already known information could not be called fair. In his words, the trouble with most western writers is that they do not benefit from such comparisons. Zemskov added that when he tried not to overuse the juxtaposition of new information with "old" one, it was only because of a sense of delicacy, not to once again psychologically traumatize the researchers whose works used incorrect figures, as it turned out after the publication of the statistics by the OGPU-NKVD-MGB-MVD. In 2005, Zemskov defended his doctoral thesis "Special settlers in the USSR. 1930–1960".

Publications

* *
ГУЛАГ (историко-социологический аспект)
// Социологические исследования. 1991. No. 7. С. 3–16.

// Социологические исследования. 1991. No. 6. С. 10–27.

// Мир России. 1999. Т. VIII. No. 4. С. 114–124.

// Социологические исследования. 1995. No. 9. С. 118–127.

// Социологические исследования. 1991. No. 2. С. 74–75.

// Социологические исследования. 1995. No. 6. С. 3–13.

// Социологические исследования. May 1995. No. 5. С. 3–13.

// Социологические исследования. 1991. No. 4. С. 3–24.

// Социологические исследования. 1990. No. 11. С. 3–17.

// Социологические исследования. 1992. No. 8. С. 18–37.

// Социологические исследования. 1992. No. 2. С. 3–26.
Политические репрессии в СССР (1917–1990 гг.).
// Россия XXI, 1994, No. 1–2. С. 107–124.

Books

Спецпоселенцы в СССР, 1930–1960
— Москва: Наука, 2005. — 306 страниц, * Сталин и народ. Почему не было восстания. — Москва: Алгоритм, 2014. — 239 страниц, * Народ и война: Страницы истории советского народа накануне и в годы Великой Отечественной войны. 1938–1945. — Москва, 2014. — 288 страниц.

Video

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zemskov, Viktor 1946 births 2015 deaths Writers from Moscow Moscow State University alumni 20th-century Russian historians Stalinism-era scholars and writers Deaths from aortic aneurysm Historians of Russia 21st-century Russian historians